INTRODUCTION
tures and hypotheses on the world for the most
certain principles. When this mutual content-
ment and satisfaction can be obtained betwixt
the master and scholar, I know not what more
we can require of our philosophy.
But if this impossibility of explaining ulti-
mate principles should be esteemed a defect
in the science of man, I will venture to affirm,
that it is a defect common to it with all the sci-
ences, and all the arts, in which we can em-
ploy ourselves, whether they be such as are
cultivated in the schools of the philosophers,
or practised in the shops of the meanest ar-
tizans. None of them can go beyond experi-
ence, or establish any principles which are not
founded on that authority. Moral philosophy
has, indeed, this peculiar disadvantage, which
is not found in natural, that in collecting its